


bad idea

by gingergenower



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: ? maybe, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Drinking, Drinking to Cope, F/M, First Meetings, Fluff, Light Angst, Musician Captain Hook | Killian Jones, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-14 17:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8023273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingergenower/pseuds/gingergenower
Summary: A mixture of the two prompts: ‘Remember that one time in college when we were at that party and you asked a random stranger to pretend to be your boyfriend/girlfriend? Yeah well that was me and we’re adults now’ and ‘fuck me you’re cute why did we have to meet on the one day I decided to stay in my sweats??’





	1. bad idea

**Author's Note:**

> ~happy birthday to me~

It's like a stranger dragging a finger down her spine and into the base of her back. Emma shivers, straightening up. She’s in the 24 hour Kmart, and she showered twenty minutes ago because fuck tight dresses and fuck makeup and _fuck_ looking good. Her hair’s sopping wet and tied up the base of her neck, the back of her t-shirt’s sodden. It could’ve been a dribble of water that made her shudder, but she knows it wasn’t.

Giving over to her body and trusting its fear, she pretends to pause, looking at something on the shelves behind her- she’s skimming the aisle.

There’s a guy stood next to the spirits. He runs his hand through his dark hair, rings on every finger, black leather jacket and eyeliner and if she were in a better mood and better clothing, he would be the exact kind of bad idea she’d like to have.

As it is, her fingers fall on a bottle of wine and she didn’t know she wanted wine until she touched it, but she foregoes the one her fingers are on and picks up the $7 bottle. She dumps it in the cart next to the six pack of beer, because if she can’t get wasted on her own in her apartment on a Saturday night (Sunday morning?) mixing her drinks, there’s no point paying the rent.

“Excuse me, lass.”

She felt his footsteps more than heard them, and she needs to just pay and get home because she’s not going to be able to relax until she’s woozy with alcohol tonight, and he stops just short of her.

“Yes?” She’s in her sweatpants, she knows her face is pink from taking the makeup off, and if he tries to hit on her she’s probably going to kill him.

“Is your name Emma?”

She looks at him properly, frowning and turning her body towards him. “Erm. Yes?”

His eyes brighten and he grins, shifting the basket he’s carrying. “I _knew_ I knew you. I’m Killian Jones, from college?”

Emma blinks, and tries to place a _Killian_ , and it’s not so much the name as the eyes, she’d remember those eyes anywhere, they’re the brightest blue-

Her eyebrows raise, and she stares at him, taking him in. “Well. You’ve changed.” Leather. Skinny jeans. Eyeliner. What happened to scruffy and unassuming?

He doesn’t blush under her scrutiny, just meets it with a smile and runs his hand through his hair again. It seems to be a habit, not actually to change his hair. “Yes. A friend gave me this-” he gestures to the jacket “- and it was all downhill from there.”

“Not downhill.”

If she gave half a shit, she’d be embarrassed, but she shrugs at him when he doesn’t quite know what to say, and he laughs and winks.

She pauses, watching him. Her friend dragged her off and didn’t let her say goodbye to him, the first time they’d met. She never thanked him.

“You saved my ass that night, by the way. Thank you.”

He shakes his head, and shrugs. “Don’t mention it.”

She still owned the dress from that night; gold sequins on a high neck and short skirt, but she didn’t wear it out much. At a college party, her friend abandoned her and she got too much attention. Killian hadn’t leered at her when she walked past, and his clothes weren’t much of anything, not like now, and he wasn’t swaying on his feet so she’d just leant across him, stealing his drink, and smiled at him through her eyelashes.

‘Pretend to be my boyfriend?’

He paused, eyes skimming over her head before he looked back at her. ‘You alright?’

‘Yeah.’

He shrugged, pouring another drink. ‘Sure.’

Emma rolls her cart aside, and she wonders where anyone’s rushing at 2am when a man in a rumpled suit squeezes past them. “It was. You didn’t even know me, and you spent basically that whole night babysitting me. And I never thanked you. So thank you.”

“I really don’t need thanking.”

“You do-”

“Look.” There’s something dark in his eyes, and he doesn’t look at her, and he swallows. “If I’d thought you were safe on your own, I probably would have been less cooperative. I did have a girlfriend, at the time.”

“I remember you saying. Wait, I’d have been safe-”

“In _that_ fraternity?”

Emma frowns.

“Men talk pretty freely with other men,” he says, swallowing. “I was only there to keep an eye on another girl, one of my friends.”

“Oh.” She swallows, and he sighs.

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s- thank you.”

It’s not a surprise, because people aren’t good or kind when you need them to be. Her job relies on it. And yet, it still feels like the air’s been knocked out of her.

He nods, and she forces a smile when she sees where he’s looking. “I still drink like a college student, I know.”

“I wasn’t going to say that…” he says, but he’s smirking.

“It’s been a day.” She says it with a shrug, a smile, but she knows it’s jaded.

Home at eleven, she thought. Her client’s ex-boyfriend sold a car that wasn’t his, and Emma did her research on him and he didn’t have a police record at all, so the pocket knife he swiped at her was an unwelcome surprise. Then, there were cops, asking her questions and asking him questions and asking bystanders and they looked through her file and questions were asked until they reviewed the security footage and he was hauled away and there was a short, fat cop who really _didn’t_ want to let her go.

Killian nods. “Want to talk about it?”

“No. Fuck my job. What do you do?”

“Musician,” he says, and she remembers he said he could play guitar.

“Oh yeah?”

“I’m actually just coming from a gig now, that’s why I’m out so late.”

“Did it go well?”

She’s actually interested, because she never heard him sing.

“Oh, yeah, the crowd was great,” he says, splitting into a grin. “I’m too psyched up now, though, so I won’t sleep for hours yet.”

“I’d advocate something healthy, like meditation,” she says, “but I’m clearly not the person to ask.”

“Self-medication can work,” he says, and she rolls her eyes.

“That’s a really, really bullshit way of putting it.”

“It sounds good though, doesn’t it?”

She grins, and nods, and his eyes fall to her lips. She swallows. “Do you wanna come back to mine? For a drink? I’m not exactly dressed to go out.” It’s her turn to run a hand through her hair, and the air con’s just a little bit too cold now.

“ _Please_ , lass. You make damp look attractive,” he says, rolling his eyes and putting his basket in her cart.

“I try,” she says, and he chuckles, turning away to lead her to the checkout, but she’s biting her lip and watching him.

She's taking him home, bad idea or not.


	2. good call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so no one’s too disappointed before they start reading, I don’t write smut. This is 99% talking, sorry not sorry.

Kicking off her shoes, Emma shuts the door behind them and Killian sweeps the bag out of her hand. He disappears into the kitchen, and she sighs, head leaning back against the door. Exhaustion doesn’t much catch up with her; she never feels safe enough to let it.

Twisting round, she locks the door and slides the catch in.

“Where’re your glasses, lass?”

Shoving herself off the door, she stand in the doorway. There isn’t room for more than two people the kitchen. “Bottom right.”

He sets two glasses on the counter, and holds out the bottle of rum he bought. “Rum?”

It’s probably better than the shit she bought. “Sure.”

They clink their glasses together and it burns, because vodka is cheaper, but it wakes her up a little. His eyes glitter, and he downs his in one, and well, she’s never turned down a challenge.

It’s worse, and she pulls a face he laughs at, but she’s not crying or coughing so she pours them both another one. “Where did you perform tonight? Last night, whatever…?”

“Not far from here,” he says. “There’s a live music restaurant off Broadway.”

“Oh, near the Velvet Lounge?”

“That’s the one.” 

“Was it alright?”

“Definitely one of the better venues I’ve been at,” he says, thinking. “Some bar gigs… well, better not to go there. You good?”

He’s about to pour his third, but she’s nursing her second. She takes the bottle out of his hand and leads him through to the couch, putting the bottle on the coffee table and collapsing into the cushions while he pours.

Once he sits back, she puts her feet on his map and melts back, resting her glass against her stomach.

“Tired?”

“Mm.” 

He’s watching her over the rim of his glass, and flicks her leg. “Go on, then. Tell me about your day.”

“You don’t want to hear,” she says. She knows by the look on his face he hears the unsaid ‘I don’t want to talk about it’.

“Maybe I do.”

Her hands rub up and down the side of her glass. “It’s really nothing special. I’m a bail bonds officer, and there was a guy that got pissed off that I found him.”

“And?”

“And nothing.” She’s staring at her glass, pressing fingerprints into it. “He got angry, but he didn’t get anywhere near me because they never do. Like, do you think I would be a bail bonds person if I couldn’t handle myself?”

“No.”

“Exactly. It’s just another day.”

He smooths a hand over her calf, and she blinks, looking up at him. “Go on.”

“What?”

“There’s something you haven’t said.”

The room’s dim, because the hallway lights are on but she just left the door open to let the light spill through, so she can mostly see him, and he can mostly see her, but he’s turned towards her like he thinks he can see everything.

“No.”

At that, he smiles and turns away. “Emma, we’re strangers. You never have to see me again if you don’t want to. Tell me.”

She swallows, and he offers her the bottle. She ignores her glass and drinks it straight from the bottle- it doesn’t burn anymore and Killian laughs, swiping the bottle out of her hands to do the same.

“Have you ever been in a fight?”

“A couple of bar fights,” he says.

“They fight back, right? Like, there’s pride or fear or whatever and they’re not pulling their punches because they’re fighting for something, right?”

“Right.” 

“Well, this guy- he attacked me. And he’s angry, he’s throwing everything he’s got at me and he can’t fight for shit, he’s had no training but _fuck_ , I wish I could fight like him.”

He frowns. “Why?”

“Because he was fighting for something. I don’t fight for anything.”

Head tilting to the side, he watches her.

“If he’d put me in hospital, no one would have visited. No one would have known. And I realised, even though the guy was an asshole, at least he wanted something, and to him, just giving it up wasn’t an option. He _wanted_ his life.”

“Fighting for yourself isn’t nothing.”

“Not wanting to die is not the same as living a real life.”

Shifting under her, his hand steadies her feet to keep them in place, and he plucks her glass out of her hand to put it next to his on the coffee table. Threading his fingers through hers, he rests their hands on the couch next to her.

They don’t say anything for a while, his thumb stroking the back of her hand, her breathing stuttering in the quiet of the apartment. Eventually, it settled, and he offered her the bottle but kept a firm hold of her hand.

She took it, swigging it again. “The rum was a good call, by the way.”

“I know.”

She smiles, and relaxes her head back. “If you came for sex, I don’t think I’m in the mood for it anymore.”

There’s nothing, for a lingering moment, and then his hand tugs her towards him. Following his lead, she ends up tucked against his side; legs still on his lap, curled up against his side, she rests her head on his shoulder. 

He kisses her forehead when she rests her head against his shoulder, and he’s so warm, and the rum is stilling her thoughts.

“Do you love your job?”

“Yes,” he says, voice gravelled with fatigue. “It’s hard, sometimes. Like when I can’t afford to pay bills, or whatever, but I love it.”

“What’s the most ridiculous thing that’s happened to you?”

He breathes in. The way he tells the story, she knows he’d tell it different if they were both fully awake. “There was this woman, and it’s my first time in the bar and she’s getting wasted, talking over me and whatever. Well, I can tell most people are getting annoyed at her, so I ask her to keep it down. She starts interrupting deliberately then, getting really angry and aggressive, so I tell her to sit down and shut up before she hurts herself.”

“What happened?”

“She tried to walk up to me and fell over. Flat on her face. Broke her nose. Whenever someone’s being an asshole when I’m performing, I think of her.”

Emma giggles, the vibrations of it shivering through Killian, and she buries her nose in his neck.

“What about you?”

“Um. A guy threw a fish at my head.”

“-what?”

“He was in a grocery store, and I was trying to corner him. I guess he thought it was a good idea at the time?”

He laughs, a full body-shaking kind of laugh, and she has to let him calm down before she can relax back into him again.

“That’s amazing,” he says, wiping his eyes. “Can I write a song about that?”

“Erm-”

He starts singing. “He threw a fish at your head, oh darling, I gotta wonder what was said… was it tuna or plaice? I wish I’d seen your face-”

“It was cod, but that’s not the point.”

“I’m seriously going to put that on my next album.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

“I’ll send you a copy.”

She shakes her head, but doesn’t answer, because her eyes keep drifting closed and she doesn’t want to fall asleep on him, but she doesn’t been this comfortable and warm in so long-

When she wakes up, they’re tangled together in her bed. She tenses up, measuring the situation. Her hand’s splayed on his stomach, she’s using the crook of his arm as a pillow, and she’s still wearing her sweats. He’s lost his shoes and his jacket, but he’s still dressed, and one of his eyes flicker open, watching her watch him.

“You told me to stay with you,” he says. There’s light outside, but the curtains are keeping it at bay, and she wants to sleep for hours yet.

Fingers tightening around his shirt, she wonders just how long she can keep him here. “Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this is okay?


End file.
